Welcome to Theater News, a regular column by longtime reviewer Anita W. Harris. Look for it most Thursdays. Or sign up for our Eat See Do newsletter to get it in your inbox.
There’s so much going on in theaters this weekend! Two local plays are continuing, one is beginning, and there’s a hilarious new play in Los Angeles about our neighboring city of Norwalk’s ban on homeless housing — which actually happened in real life.
Locally, “Predictor” at The Garage Theatre, 251 E. Seventh St., is entering its final weekend, casting us into the mind of the erased woman who invented home pregnancy tests.
For tickets, visit TheGarageTheatre.org.
And “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” at Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., is continuing for two more weekends, the perfect play to get into the Halloween spirit, having experienced it last week.
Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher took Robert Louis Stevenson’s well-known novel and split the evil Mr. Hyde into four actors in dark glasses, played with plenty of snarl and menace by Aaron Izbicki, Trevor Hart, Terrance Sylvas and Carmen Tunis (who is also great as Jekyll’s friend Utterson).
Hatcher also gave Mr. Hyde a girlfriend, which is a little strange given Hyde’s propensity to maim and murder women, such as by throwing acid on them, but Elizabeth (Alexandra Young, understudied by Renée Schwartz) seems to be a strong woman who knows her mind.
And David Vaillancourt as the mild and intelligent Dr. Jekyll plays up his character’s ambivalence about his evil alter ego as he experiments with potent potions. All in all, the play is an entertaining escape into the macabre.
For tickets, call the box office at 562-494-1014 or visit LBPlayhouse.org.
Another play is opening this week at California Repertory — CSULB drama department’s theater company — called “Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea,” a reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” written by Julia Izumi and directed by Alana Dietze.
Cal Rep describes the play, staged at its Studio Theatre, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., as a “poetic meditation on unrequited love, personal storytelling and emotional chaos” about a little rain cloud who falls in love.
“Set in a whimsical world where fable meets memory, the play is led by a narrator desperately trying to maintain order as their characters and former lovers spiral into rebellion,” the theater says. “With sea witches, shapeshifting metaphors and a heartbreak storm on the horizon, the story blurs the line between fairy tale logic and human longing.”
For tickets and information, visit CSULB.edu.
Further afield in Los Angeles, the Latino Theater Company is staging a high-energy, funny and interesting new play called “The Little King of Norwalk” that might appeal due to Norwalk’s proximity to Long Beach and our shared challenge of housing the homeless.
In real life, the Norwalk City Council approved a ban on homeless shelters in August 2024, along with businesses serving low-income residents like liquor stores, discount stores and laundromats, citing its “police power” to do so.
Israel López Reyes’s play satirizes the councilmembers behind the ban and two siblings caught in its wake — Wendy Perez (Esperanza América), an activist fighting the ordinance, and her brother Juan (Xavi Moreno), who figures out how he can benefit from it.
Though Reyes borrowed the story from Russian writer Nikolai Gogol’s satirical 1836 “The Inspector General,” he set his play squarely in his native Norwalk, a map of its streets and barrios projected onto large translucent screens on stage (designed by Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh).
Wendy and Juan had lived in a car for a year at one point with their mother when their father had to return to Mexico, and Wendy now takes phone calls from unhoused single mothers and veterans, promising to help, and is vocal at City Council meetings against the ban.
Meanwhile, we see the council members peering out of City Hall’s windows to see how many anti-ban protesters have amassed while denigrating the homeless and impoverished. But because their characters are so hilariously exaggerated, we can laugh at their diatribes.
Mayor Alvarado (Randy Vasquez), with the clean-cut precision of a former military officer and a Hitler mustache, spits out the worst invectives against both the poor and Gov. Gavin Newsom for curbing his city’s right to make independent decisions. He’s joined by savvy City Manager Nancy Juarez (Ruth Livier) and dyslexic School Superintendent Alex Ayala (J.Ed Araiza).
Police Chief Ricky Ortiz is performed with great comic effect by Richard Azurdia, whose dancing at the Acapulco in Downey while council members sing karaoke is just one scene that elicits uncontrollable giggling.
When the council mistakes Juan for a state inspector and offers him bribes to report on how the ban is justified — playing on their mutual Mexican heritage — Juan seizes his ticket to a job and rent money.
Reyes’s writing is tight, full of jokes and local geographic and cultural references, and very distinct characters, each of whom the actors fully inhabit with energetic vocals and fluid physical movement, as directed by Geoffrey Rivas.
Though in real life Norwalk’s homeless shelter ban was rescinded last month after a state lawsuit, this uproarious play is still a timely comment on the haves and have-nots, those with power and those with the overriding power of heart —and a model of theater as a space of reflection and transformation.
“The Little King of Norwalk” continues through Nov. 2. The Latino Theater Company is in The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. For tickets and information, visit LatinoTheaterCo.org.